Savior vs. Savior

Continued (page 5 of 7)

For a while, when Nick was a teenager and she was having trouble with him, Lindsey would go out to talk to Scott at the house he was sharing with Tim Parks. Even though she thought he was crazy, she also knew how to reach a part of him that wanted to be a father to Nick and a protector to her. The house was squalid. They called it a farmhouse, but it was just at the edge of the suburbs of Kansas City. They heated the place with a wood fire. They raised chickens. She never wanted to touch anything inside—there were clothes and grimy water jugs everywhere; Scott didn’t drink tap water because of the fluoride, which after careful research he’d discovered had been designed by corporations and added by municipalities to make the populace more docile.

They found some common ground when they talked about Nick. Scott told her not to worry, that he’d had his rebellious period, too, that it was a phase. But that moment always dissolved. Scott began talking about the tax code and the unborn again, and soon he drifted out to some further orbit, calling only occasionally from phone numbers she didn’t recognize.

*****

two months ago, at the end of March, Scott had been up in Wichita. Dr. Tiller was on trial, and Scott made it to the courthouse as often as he could. He wouldn’t say it was the straw that broke the camel’s back or that a lightbulb went off or anything, but watching that trial14did not help. He felt chills being in the same room as George Tiller, a mass murderer under protection from the state, watching him sitting there with his sterling legal team in their perfect suits. If you had enough money, you could protect yourself from anything. That’s how he’d gotten Governor Sebelius in his pocket. There were photographs of George Tiller visiting the governor’s mansion. And did you know Tiller had the largest PAC in the state?15 The gallery was full, mostly with people who’d come to see George Tiller convicted of a crime. Operation Rescue had organized the whole thing. You just called them and they gave you the details. Troy had this special deal where a trooper they were friendly with would save them seats before the gallery filled up.

The trial lasted four days. In the morning and after the lunch recess they brought in bomb-sniffing dogs. Dr. Tiller was escorted in by police through the basement. They wouldn’t let you come back in if you left to go to the bathroom. Scott thought: What kind of country is this? This guy gets special treatment because he murders babies? On the afternoon of the fourth day, the jury deliberated a wholetwenty-eight minutes, and then an announcement went out that a verdict had been reached. The sheriff’s office had intelligence that someone was planning to throw battery acid if the jury found Dr. Tiller not guilty. A cordon of deputies stood shoulder to shoulder facing the gallery when the verdict was read. Not guilty. Afterward, Scott started wondering if George Tiller hadn’t somehow gotten to the jury. There was a blizzard coming, the sky was darkening, and snow began to appear in the air. Everyone was eager to clear the court and start for home. The jurors were escorted to their cars. Unbelievable.

*****

george tiller gave no sign that he was ever unsure about the act he was performing. If there was any doubt, it had never been exhibited. And for anyone who felt doubt on his staff, he handed down an intention to live with: Think about the woman. Because they saved people here. That’s what George Tiller was saying. They didn’t kill people; they saved them. All you had to do was to look at the walls. Framed letters from patients testifying to having been saved. That’s how they described what happened to them. Hearing that was addictive. Everyone admitted that—felt a little guilty about getting off on it, but not too. Cathy and Joan used to wonder what they’d do when they retired and didn’t get to feel that thing anymore. Even Roeder had heard about the letters, everyone in the network had; it blew their minds and filled their hearts with disappointment. The letters weren’t relegated to a single wall. There was room after room of them, thanking and thanking, overwhelming you the first time you walked into the clinic. Answering the tacit question: No, we save people here.

*****

when scott got up from his pew and walked into the foyer, he saw George Tiller standing with Gary Hoepner, who was manning the church-bulletin table. Dr. Tiller had his back to him, but Gary looked right at Scott. Gary is 61 years old, retired from Boeing. He looks as if he’s never said a mean thing to anyone in his life. It was about ten; the music was winding down. Soon the ushers would move into the sanctuary to help with the service. You going to eat a doughnut? George asked Gary. No, I already ate something at Bagatelle. George said, I like that place. Gary went for a doughnut anyway—what he calls a jelly roll. He looked at Roeder as if he recognized him. He’d seen him last Sunday, too, and he thought, There’s that odd guy from last week who went to the bathroom in the middle of the sermon. As Scott walked behind a pillar, Gary took a bite of the jelly roll. When Scott emerged from behind the pillar, he had a small gun in his hand, a gray .22-caliber pistol. Gary saw him walk up to George.16

14. There's more soap-operatic Kansas-politics backstory than is possible to explain here. But at the heart of the matter, at least for a while, were medical ﬁles from Tiller's clinic, which attorney general Phill Kline, elected on the promise to shut Tiller down, had subpoenaed.

15. This is true. He poured close to a million dollars over the past seven years into the PAC that he formed, ProKanDo.

16. GQ: "Did you look him in the eye when you shot him? Was that important to you?"
Roeder: "No. That wasn't important to me."